POTW | Battle Creek Highwood Nbhd

Overlooking Pigs Eye Lake—where modern-day St. Paul got its original name—the Battle Creek – Highwood neighborhood borders the very river, rails and trails that brought people, goods and ideas to and from the area in the late 1800s. Those same channels were also traveled by indigenous peoples prior to European settlement.

Today, home prices in Battle Creek – Highwood (BCH) are significantly more affordable than the metro area as a whole. Go ahead and click on the Twin Cities Region entry in the legend above the chart, and you’ll quickly see that BCH prices mirror the trend in St. Paul pretty closely.

For most of the last six years, however, those selling properties in BCH received a higher share of their list price compared to St. Paul. BCH homes typically sell for 97.8 percent of their original list price compared to 96.7 percent for all of St. Paul.

BCH homes also sell in less time compared to the city as a whole. Homes in the neighborhood tend to sell in an average of 69 days on the market compared to 83 days for the City of St. Paul.

Though the situation has vastly improved, BCH was relatively hard-hit by foreclosures and short sales between 2009 and 2013. In May 2011, over 70.0 percent of homes selling were either foreclosures or short sales. As of June 2015, that figure stood at 23.6 percent.